Ableton/Myspace Mastering Help !!!

[sinyou]

Just to set the scene we produce on Ableton on PC use an echo 2 sound card and some Rubicon R6a monitors. Basically once we have made a track and render to disk and convert to MP3 to put on MySpace they always end up real quiet. We have been experimenting with various different combinations i.e.
Monitors up loud, Master down low, Channels has high as we can with out pushing the red, we have tried loads of combinations to no great effect just peppering the hard drive with loads of versions of the same track.
What is the best way of doing this do we set the channels high or low/master high or low/monitors high or low.

Some guidance would really helpful. Thanks SINYOU

www.myspace.com/sinyoumusic

[stapleface]

myspace is an mp3 murderer.
it might be that your track's just suffered horribly from being compressed into a myspace-quality audio file.

[james fox]

mix your track down well so that it peaks at -4db on the master, then slam it a bit with a decent limiter.

[midnightminustwo]

mix your track down well so that it peaks at -4db on the master, then slam it a bit with a decent limiter.

what james said. you can't go wrong giving it a touch of compression and limiter. epsecially for web previews, and mp3s really like limmited/compressed tunes.

(btw hello james)

[lowpass]

mix your track down well so that it peaks at -4db on the master, then slam it a bit with a decent limiter.

what james said. you can't go wrong giving it a touch of compression and limiter. epsecially for web previews, and mp3s really like limmited/compressed tunes.

(btw hello james)

+ 1 having your monitors high or low won't make a difference to how loud your track is, just means you'll be hearing it at a different volume. when in doubt though send to a mastering engineer. Better to fork out than to mess up your track by not knkowing how to use compression/limiting well

[altered state]

I always vote for the

"just make sure your mixdown is the best you can get it" tactic - that way itll sound good regardless

[macc]

If you're already applying a limiter and pushing that pretty hard and they still sound quiet, then odds on the cause is too much bass.

Excellent spectral balance/tone, with correctly controlled individual dynamic elements (not necessarily squished) will give a good master with only moderate limiting.

How's the overall sound/tone qualityin comparison to other things, when you set them to the same subjective level?

[b-lam]

in my experience, if you turn the myspace volume above 75 percent it starts to sound EVEN MORE distorted so I'd tend to limit (as suggested by others earlier) for myspace more than I would for a normal master, as it may avoid people turning it up on the myspace fader.

Bear in mind I havn't actually tested this properly so I might be wrong.

I wouldn't put too much effort into myspace mixdowns, everyone knows myspace is shite, I very much doubt anyone judges anything but musical content from myspace previews.

[ta7]

As macc said, too much bass in the mix will suck out the volume and a good healthy spectrum is the key.

I can think of two other ways you could improve it...

1. Master as usual, leave a tiny bit more headroom than normal, say 0.05db. Upload it onto myspace and record it back. Get the two mixes (the original and the recorded lo-fi one) and phase invert the original then mix both down to wav. This should leave behind the bits that myspace lost. Now take that mixdown and mix back into the original master, remember the idea is to exaggerate the bits that we lost on myspace but keep the clarity of the original. Then re-upload and see how it sounds.

2. Use your dynamics processors (compressor, limiter, maximizer) with a lower threshold to squeeze the mix together. This may sound like bad practice, but because the bandwidth and bit resolution is so small compared to wav or cd, it will sound clearer and punchier. It ruins mixes for anything else, be careful.

EDIT: Just remembered - dont know if you are using Cubase SX 3, but there is a magic fader on the export mixdown box with no description. Its a master fader. Turn it up full for bit-accurate rendering. Its easy to forget.

[macc]

Number 1 is a nice idea in principle, but getting the stream back from myspace will be subject to massive amounts of jitter. You need sample accuracy for a proper (read; useful) null comparison and that's just not going to happen.

I seem to remember once upon a time getting a 320 mp3 of the mastered version of one of my own tunes from Heathmans, then trying to null it with my original to see what they'd done. It phased all over the shop as the timing wobbled infinitessimally due to jitter It was a 320 made direct from the master wav, sent over by the label dude. Imagine how bad myspaz will be

Have a crack though and let us know how you get on Would be interesting!

[ta7]

Thats a good point. I have never done this in practice and you are right, there is a lot of jitter and shifting going on. Maybe use some form of RMS frequency analysis and use that *curve* to eq the original?

I guess, like you said with your 320 you lose bit accuracy from the moment you go from flat samples haha.

I'm gonna give it a play with anyway. More of my life spent in front of a computer haha

[macc]

EDIT: Just remembered - dont know if you are using Cubase SX 3, but there is a magic fader on the export mixdown box with no description. Its a master fader. Turn it up full for bit-accurate rendering. Its easy to forget.

That's a playback volume meter for when you're doing real-time rendering, and doesn't affect the bounced file

[ta7]

So thats what it does....

It has confused me for a while haha. I eat my words

[macc]

I only know that cos I did what you said once and blew my ears off

Thought I'd better investigate WTF it was